I graduated with a Master's degree and have been working at Company X which is a major luxury retailer for 7 months as an analyst. I got a call from a recruiter for Company Y, also a major luxury retailer for a program manager role based out of NYC.
I do well in the interviews and they extend me an offer. Guess what? They're offering me $60K for a program manager role in Manhattan! I politely tell the recruiter that the lowest offer I could accept was $130K considering it's a manager role and the cost of living in NYC would be high. My counter was lower than the average salary for similar positions in NYC. The recruiter is taken aback and calls my proposition 'absurd'. She then went on a rant about how I'm being unreasonable and considering my skills and experience, I won't find anything remotely close to what I want and I should change my attitude. She also mentioned she has candidates willing to accept $50K for the same position (bless those idiots)!
I tell her that I'm already making $85K at my current position in a state with one of the lowest average incomes and it would be 'absurd' for me to accept more work for much lower pay at a place with extremely high living costs. All she has to say is 'you got lucky!'. I just hung up. I don't get why my skills are in question when I've already cleared the interviews and was deemed worthy enough to extend a job offer. It makes me furious to think that corporations are finding this practice sustainable just because there are people desperate enough to accept anything! And apparently it's not just small or mid-size businesses, everyone's doing it!